So, a reporter, a fan and a Captain Jean-Luc Picard action figure walk into a 'The Next Generation' reunion

"I think I dove into 'Star Trek' because it was an escape," Shannon Downey on loving 'The Next Generation.'

Reporter's log, stardate: 082214

On a sticky August evening, I found myself on the back porch of Wicker Park's Handlebar restaurant with a dinner companion who'd been to space.

He'd also been drowned by William Shatner, resuscitated by Scott Bakula, danced the first minute of Beyonce's "Single Ladies" almost perfectly and met Patrick Stewart.

Well, in a way he is Patrick Stewart.

He's a Capt. Jean-Luc Picard action figure, and he's famous for his adventures. (Stewart portrayed Picard on "Star Trek: The Next Generation," the second series in the "Trek" canon.)

'Star Trek: The Next Generation' reunion

Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune

Shannon Downey, of Chicago, places an action figure of Captain Jean-Luc Picard on her knee before the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" reunion.

Shannon Downey, of Chicago, places an action figure of Captain Jean-Luc Picard on her knee before the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" reunion. (Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune)

Seated next to the captain action figure was his human companion, Shannon Downey, 36, who carries him everywhere, documenting all of his exploits on the popular Capt. Jean-Luc Picard (action figure) Facebook page. We were meeting to discuss the captain's next adventure: attending a reunion of the seven main cast members of "The Next Generation" on Sunday evening at Wizard World, a comic/pop culture convention that drew thousands of fans to the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont for four days of panels, celebrity appearances and general geekery.

"I have never been to anything like this," Downey said of the "Trek" panel, which promised an hour and a half of behind-the-scenes stories from the cast.

Downey, president and founder of Pivotal, a marketing company, and an adjunct professor at DePaul University, is a self-proclaimed geek. She's passionate about many TV shows, movies and books currently in the zeitgeist, but her excitability surrounding "Star Trek" is a bit more pronounced.

To put it simply, Downey is a Trekkie.

Trekkies, or Trekkers, nicknames for die-hard fans of "Star Trek," obsess over some portion (or all) of "Trek's" 12 movies and five TV series that chronicle life in a mostly peaceful future where humans travel through the cosmos at warp speed, live on spaceships and discover new worlds and alien species.

In 1987, years after the original series (1966-1969) built up a ferociously dedicated fan base through reruns, Paramount premiered a series aptly titled "The Next Generation." The show starred Stewart as the levelheaded, incredibly introspective Picard, the leader of a diverse team of Starfleet officers on a mission through space, the final frontier.

"The Next Generation" was Downey's first experience with "Trek" and remains her favorite. At 9, she and her father, a former pipe fitter, would watch every episode in their living room in Weymouth, Mass.

"My dad grew up on the original and Shatner, and when 'Next Generation' came out, he was super excited about it, and so that became our weekly ritual," Downey said. "Throughout all those awkward teen years where you have nothing to bond with your dad over, we had 'Star Trek.'"

Downey said she liked "Star Trek's" vision of a mostly harmonious future but that it was the show's sense of adventure that really hooked her.

"I grew up in a working class area, and nobody kind of did anything," she said. "What I saw was everybody sort of lived the same life where you went to college or you didn't, you got married, you bought a house, you had kids, you did something forever. You got a job, and you did that forever. I remember, even at 13, I was like, 'That cannot be my life. I am choking on that idea, and I am so far away from it.' I think I dove into 'Star Trek' because it was an escape. It wasn't even that it was a vision of a life that's possible; it's just that there was other stuff out there."

As a freshman at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Downey introduced her dorm mates to the series, and for Christmas a friend got her the Capt. Picard figurine. He traveled everywhere with Downey, sealed away in his box like any valuable action figure.

Until about five years ago, when Downey and her friends freed the captain from his container, took photos of him posing as a fellow partygoer — glass of wine and all — and posted them to Facebook. Oh, there was drinking involved, Downey said with a laugh. Just days later, the captain's Facebook page had 400 likes.

"My dad grew up on the original and Shatner, and when 'Next Generation' came out, he was super excited about it, and so that became our weekly ritual."- Shannon Downey, 'Trekkie'

She has carried Picard in her purse every day since then, always ready to take pictures of the captain out and about. He has traveled with her to Paris and Tuscany, and yes, he really did go into space after a friend held a successful Kickstarter campaign to launch the captain and film it.

"He's always around Chicago," Downey said. "Everybody knows that he is with me. I will be in a business meeting, and someone will ask to meet the captain … so sometimes he leads board meetings or new client meetings."

The action figure is a joke, of course, but he's also a small tribute to the fictional character of Picard, her favorite on the show.

"With 'Next Generation,' the series got way headier, and maybe that was driven by Patrick Stewart," she said. "I feel like his character is what made that happen. He's what changed everything, because he is so different from Shatner; he wasn't a playboy. (The writers) spent a lot more time with character development and storylines and making sure that viewers really knew and connected with each character."

Reporter's log, star date: 082314

"Star Trek: The Next Generation" ran for seven seasons, bowing in 1994. In its last season, the show was nominated for an Emmy, marking the only time a syndicated show has been nominated. Throughout the run of 'Next Generation' as well as in the original series, 'Star Trek' was known for having a diverse cast.

Sitting in his booth near the back of the autograph area at Wizard World, LeVar Burton, who played engineer Geordi La Forge, said seeing actress Nichelle Nichols as Lt. Uhura on the original 'Star Trek' "meant that when the future came, there was going to be a place for me."

"I have been a science fiction fan all of my life, and (series creator) Gene (Roddenberry's) vision of the future was one of the very few that I encountered as a child that had heroes who looked like me," he said. "I don't think people really understand how important seeing oneself represented in popular culture is for developing a healthy self-image."

Many of the other "Next Generation" actors, lined up next to one another in the autograph area, said the positivity of the future envisioned in "Star Trek" is one of the reasons fans still flock to the show.

"'Star Trek' is a vision of the future that assumes that we will have resolved all issues of race and class and economy," Burton said. "One where we will have learned to co-operate more and compete less and be united as a human family, sufficient enough to create a sustainable society here on Earth and then be able to venture out among the stars and explore in a peaceful, nonintrusive, noninvasive manner. That speaks to a huge evolution in human consciousness."

Said Jonathan Frakes, who played William Riker: "Gene had a vision of the future that was very hopeful, and as our present is revealed to be so painful and so cruel, 'Star Trek' provided an outlet, a strain to hold onto for a lot of people, and I think it has helped people through some very tough times. I know it has."

Reporter's log, star date: 082414

"I am so excited," Downey said while we waited for the "Next Generation" reunion panel to start. Sporting a gray "Trek" shirt and gleefully holding the captain, she added, "On a scale of 1 to 10, I am a 35."

But in her next breath, Downey expressed some concern over the panel: "I have this cognitive dissonance when it comes to actors and characters. I am very cautious about seeing the actors whose characters I love speak as themselves, because I don't want to ruin the characters. I've never seen any of them outside of (Stewart) speak, so I am excited and a little nervous about what that will be like."

As the cast finally took the stage Sunday evening, almost every seat in the Rosemont Theater was filled, with fans wanting to ask questions already lined up in the aisles. Like a sort of "Star Trek"-focused State of the Union address, audience members erupted into fits of clapping every time they agreed with a cast member's statement. Gasping and laughing and sighing at the same time, the audience — and Downey — gave the cast as much positive energy as it could, and the actors delivered candor in return.

Moderated expertly by Shatner, the conversation flowed from the perennial question of why the show was so popular to what storylines they would have written for themselves to what was with all that spandex.

In response to a question about how much of himself is in his character, Stewart said: "By the end of the third season and the start of the fourth, I truly didn't know where Picard left off and Patrick started. I had input into things that became important in Picard's life, and they were things that were important to me. I think, as I got more confident in the role, I got braver about exposing aspects of myself that I wouldn't have normally done in a TV show."

With the captain perched on her knee, Downey tapped me. "I was right," she whispered, referring to her belief that Stewart drove the show's "headier" direction.

Both of the women — Gates McFadden (Dr. Beverly Crusher) and Marina Sirtis (Counselor Deanna Troi) — said they would have liked more scenes together. "What you have to remember," Sirtis said, "was although we were doing a show about the 24th century, it was generally written by 20th-century white men."

"Listening to them talk about the experience of being women on the show was really disheartening, although I am not surprised," Downey said later. "Growing up, what I saw were these strong female characters who were doctors and had these important roles on a starship. For me, they became this image of what was possible and what equality looked like, so hearing the reality of their lives as actors behind the scenes was really surprising."

After a discussion of technology that seems as if it could have been inspired by "Star Trek" — the iPad, for example — an audience member asked the cast members if their roles on the show inspired them to learn more about science.

"I can't say that it has," Stewart said. "I try to read the science supplement in The New York Times every weekend, but I struggle. I still don't know how to cut and paste."

"I loved that line," Downey said with a laugh later. Understanding "the hard science behind all of 'Star Trek' is just not a reality for him. ... I thought it was so honest and sweet and sincere."

After the panel, Downey glowed. "It was a great experience."

"They really do like each other, and they have this incredible history," she said. "You get that they have all of this back story together that leaks out here and there, which I think is endearing."

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